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Anyone who has seen Contagion, the 2011 medical thriller directed by Stephen Soderberg, will not only recall a lot of A-list actors happily lining up to play characters who would be killed off by a deadly virus but that the film presents examples of crowd psychology and mass hysteria. The film demonstrates very well the

I love the Ploughing Championships, and always have. Back in the days when I was a journalist, I covered the event for many years, and I revisited it again about five years ago. Of course, over recent decades it has grown into a monster festival of Irish life, and the ploughing bit is becoming less

The Scottish Independence Referendum caught fire over the last few days with successive opinion polls showing huge gains for the YES side with some putting those seeking independence in the lead. An independent Scotland is firmly in the picture but what will this mean for Ireland? Despite the kinship we feel for our Celtic brethren,

If you haven’t heard of the phenomenon that is the Ice Bucket Challenge, one can only assume that you’ve spent the last few weeks hidden far from society in the depths of some desert or jungle. Few can deny that this latest internet craze has had by far the most impact when compared with the

The Middle East has been thrown into turmoil since the Arab Spring/Arab Awakening began in 2010 with the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, in protest of police corruption and ill treatment in Tunisia. The spring, which spread like wild fire across the Arab world, saw the ousting of Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the

The pace of change in Irish media is such that every week produces a fascinating new development. This week has proved to be no different. Yesterday Independent News and Media Group (INM) announced it is to combine the news teams in its papers The Herald and the Sunday World. In a move that mirrors their

The Minister for Health, Leo Varadkar announced in a by-lined article in the Irish Independent that the Government would not meet its own deadline for the introduction of Universal Healthcare. His decision to do so, on a quiet Tuesday post Bank holiday during ‘silly season’ – the technical term for the slow Summer news period

“Grafton Street’s a Wonderland, There’s Magic in the Air” so the lyrics go, well actually, No and No! Recently I had occasion to traverse Grafton Street and was appalled by the experience. It’s not the disruption caused by the repaving programme (every city has to endure this kind of disruption from time to time), which

The Omnishambles surrounding the Garth Brooks concerts is at an end. The real losers in the scheme of things are the fans and ticket holders but at least they’ll get a refund (said with regret for anyone who is also out of pocket for travel or accommodation bookings). The economy (regionally and nationally) has also

A brief scene in an episode of the Danish political drama Borgen that I watched recently gave me pause to think about the nature of some of the images and stories that increasingly feature in media reports. The ambitious journalist Katrine was accompanied to Afghanistan by an overzealous photographer who, on thrusting his lens into